My son will not be a slave – The 1987 book Beloved by American author Toni Morrison served as the inspiration for this piece of art. The book, which is set in the years following the American Civil War, centers on a dysfunctional family of freed slaves whose Cincinnati home is cursed by an evil ghost. The story of Beloved is based on the escape of enslaved Margaret Garner from the slave state of Kentucky to the free state of Ohio in 1856.
In an effort to prevent her children from being sent back to slavery, Garner attempted to kill her children and had already killed her youngest daughter when U.S. marshals broke into the cabin where she and her husband had barricaded themselves.
